Today in History

Today is Monday, April 13, the 103rd day of 2015. There are 262 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On April 13, 1965, 16-year-old Lawrence Wallace Bradford Jr. was appointed by New York Republican Jacob Javits to be the first black page of the U.S. Senate.

On this date:

In 1613, Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, was captured by English Capt. Samuel Argall in the Virginia Colony. (During a yearlong captivity, Pocahontas converted to Christianity and ultimately opted to stay with the English. )

In 1742, Handel's "Messiah" had its first public performance in Dublin, Ireland.

In 1743, the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, was born in Shadwell in the Virginia Colony.

In 1912, the Royal Flying Corps, a predecessor of Britain's Royal Air Force, was created.

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C., on the 200th anniversary of the third American president's birth.

In 1958, Van Cliburn of the United States won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition for piano in Moscow; Russian Valery Klimov won the violin competition.

In 1964, Sidney Poitier became the first black performer in a leading role to win an Academy Award for his performance in "Lilies of the Field." Patricia Neal was named best actress for "Hud"; best picture went to "Tom Jones."

In 1970, Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the moon, was crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst. (The astronauts managed to return safely.)

In 1986, Pope John Paul II visited the Great Synagogue of Rome in the first recorded papal visit of its kind to a Jewish house of worship.

In 1992, the Great Chicago Flood took place as the city's century-old tunnel system and adjacent basements filled with water from the Chicago River.

Ten years ago: A defiant Eric Rudolph pleaded guilty to carrying out the deadly bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and three other attacks in back-to-back court appearances in Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta. Contract worker Jeffrey Ake (ayk) was shown at gunpoint on a videotape aired by Al-Jazeera television, two days after he was kidnapped near Baghdad. (His fate remains unknown.) Gymnast Paul Hamm (hahm) received the 75th Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete.

Five years ago: World leaders concluded a 47-nation nuclear security conference in Washington, endorsing President Barack Obama's call for securing all of the globe's vulnerable nuclear materials within four years, but offering few specifics for achieving that goal. First lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden paid a surprise visit to Haiti, the scene of a devastating earthquake three months earlier.

One year ago: The head of the United Nations' expert panel on climate change said the cost of keeping global warming in check was "relatively modest," but only if the world acted quickly to reverse the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. Three people were shot to death at two sites in suburban Kansas City; suspect Frazier Glenn Miller, a white supremacist, was allegedly targeting Jews (none of the victims was Jewish). Thirty-six people were killed when a bus slammed into a broken-down truck in Veracruz, Mexico. Bubba Watson won the Masters for the second time in three years.

Thought for Today: "Happiness is not the absence of problems but the ability to deal with them." — Charles Louis de Montesquieu, French philosopher (1689-1755).

(Above Advance for Use Monday, April 13)